dudacek

I was going for "general perception that they stick within their comfort zone." If you want to remove the "general perception" part I won't argue.

You are certainly not alone in this. This is a team that in the past 2 months traded its captain, traded its leading scorer, and fired its coach. I think it says something when they’ve swapped out possibly the 3 most high-profile positions in the organization and the overwhelming reaction is that they are not doing anything and are hopelessly married to the status quo.

Not in the limited playoff games I saw. Looked real good when Peterka and Quinn were anchoring it for him.

This is basically what I was going for with the “organizational stereotypes” comment.

I posted this a few weeks back in regards to a similar post and didn’t get a response: what are the specific concerns with Wilford? This team has a ridiculous number of young defencemen and it’s my perception his job is largely their development. Jokiharju, Dahlin, Bryson all seem better than they were before he arrived. Johnson seemed fine. Power and Clifton came on after poor starts. I’m not defending him - I’ve got no strong feelings about him - just curious as to why he’s on some people’s hit list.

This. Adams thinks the plan is working and is adjusting within the plan. Fandom thinks the plan is failing and a new plan is needed. Reactions will proceed accordingly.

Regardless of anyone’s personal feelings about him, Seth Appert is eminently qualified to be an NHL assistant coach. The pushback is partly about his fit for this particular role, partly about the “new” staff as a whole, and mostly about the perpetuation of fears about organizational stereotypes.

Cap space this year is only an issue if they add some expensive players this summer. Its only an issue next year if Peterka and Quinn break out. And if that happens, they do what good teams do, they move a contract out and backfill with one of the many prospects they have accumulated. That’s kinda the whole purpose of accumulating prospects and locking up your core long-term.

This is him responding to patterns he wants to see the Sabres break through the lens of evidence today that they won’t.

It’s a good indicator of how rock-bottom people feel when the hiring of an assistant coach threatens to push them over the edge.

I guess Lindy is the "bad cop"? Appert has a good history with a lot of these guys. Don't see him as the solution for special teams and accountability. No NHL experience either. I guess he's got a better resume than Christie.

Good to have you back

It’s really about being able to win the matchup on the ice at any given time. The more players you have who are above average in their slot, the better your chances of winning. I look at the rough math. With 6 players on the ice and your best forward playing 20 minutes a game, he’s what 6% of the total puzzle? Compare that to basketball where the top guy is up over 15% Every improvement matters, but in hockey, improving multiple roster slots a little should have much more impact than adding any single impact player. The Canucks jumped because they made external adds that improved them a bit in multiple spots, and so many of their returning players upped their game at the same time. The Sabres need to do something similar.

NHL was so easy for when I was a kid - 16 of 21 teams made it. NFL was so hard - just 10 of 30 qualified And that’s how it’s been cemented in my head. Now the NHL is 16 of 32 and the NFL 14 of 32. Kinda snuck up on me how much that has changed.

@Brawndohas touched on this few times too, and hasn’t got a ton of traction on here yet. But this is a year where it should. The idea of keeping space set aside for internal raises starts to lose its heft when you have the number of long-term commitments that the Sabres now have. Once they pay UPL and maybe Byram, they’ve basically got their core locked up. The Quinns and Peterkas are 5 years away from UFA status. They will have to do what all the adult teams do, make hard decisions on who to keep. Teams don’t have cores of 10. The Sabres were $8M under the cap this year. They didn’t have to be then and they don’t have to be now. They are $23M under the cap for next year. Once they pay/replace UPL, Joki, Krebs, Girgensons, they should have at least $10M available to fill the roster spots occupied Olofsson, Jost and Robinson. Adams needs to spend that cap space on real players. It’s even more crazy when you look at the competition. New Jersey has been terrible. They’ve missed 10 times in the past 12 years. But they still managed to make it twice. Florida was worse: 16 times in 18 years. But they still managed to make it twice. Columbus missed 11 of their first 13 seasons. But still got there twice. Coyotes 11 of 12. Ottawa 6 in a row and 7 of the past 8. Vancouver 7 of the past 8. Detroit 8 in a row. Bad teams in the NHL post lockout tend to stay bad for a while, but they usually sneak in at least one outlier. But the Sabres, nope. It’s really quite remarkable.

What I find condescending is you bringing your automatic default of “the Sabres are doing it wrong” when you don’t seem to know what they are doing with the Amerks, or what other teams in the AHL are doing. Show me the farm teams loaded with a group of NHL depth players. Farm team veterans are a mix of has-beens, never-we’re and tweeners. Not just Buffalo’s, all of them. If they were real NHL depth, they’d be in the NHL. https://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/leagues/seasons/teams/0000312024.html https://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/leagues/seasons/teams/0005082024.html https://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/leagues/seasons/teams/0060542024.html https://www.hockeydb.com/ihdb/stats/leagues/seasons/teams/0039912024.html

Generally agree with this. All pieces are important, and a team is only as good as all its pieces combined. But the core is more important than the other pieces, because they are the ones that get the most ice time in the toughest situations against the best players. And, comparatively speaking, our core was the part of the team that contributed the least compared to expectations Basically, what I am responding to is the assumption that the core will be fine if they get better pieces around them. That's not necessarily true, and it certainly wasn't last season.

The Sabres have rebuilt from the bottom 4 times before: Punch: .404, .327, 564, .487, .706 stayed good but never got over the hump Gerry Meehan: .400, .531, .519, .613, .506 faded and reset under Muckler Tim Murray: .317, .329, .494, .476, failed and reset under Botterill Jason Botterill: .378, .463, .493, Botterill fired for insubordination Kevyn Adams: .330, .457, .555, .512 They've also tried to rebuild with youth twice without fully bottoming out, when Scotty started collecting 1st rounders, and when Darcy traded Hasek Scotty: .581, .556, .684, .563, .500 Bowman fired the next season as his rebuild failed Darcy: .500, .439, .518, LO, .671 team stayed mostly good before free agency chewed it away Year 4 results haven't proved to be a great indicator of success or failure of any particular build. In fact, it looks like it's not unusual to fall back in the 4th year of this type of build. The pattern Adams seems to be most closely following is that of Punch. We can only hope.

I realize I seem to be in the minority around here on this, but adding the best 3rd and 4th liners in the world won't mean ***** if Cozens, Skinner, Thompson and Tuch combine for less than 100 goals again as our core 4 forwards. The total offensive collapse of the core, not the goaltending, nor the defence, nor the contributions of Krebs, Girgensons, Okposo etc. is the biggest reason reason this team didn't make the playoffs.

I wonder about this too, and yet the 83 %....

He really is very much a "trust the process" man. If I'm honest with myself, I think I am too, and that's why probably why I'm willing to give him every opportunity to play this out. I think by and large his strategy is the correct one given this market and the crater that has been built in it. But just because the strategy is correct, that doesn't mean the execution is correct. That's where I tend to see things differently than @PerreaultForever a lot. I think Adams actually is trying to do a lot of the things he complains about in terms of culture and building from within. It's the execution where the two of them differ: Adams went speed and skill first over grit and defence, and force-feeding youth responsibility early rather than shielding them behind a collection of Pat Maroons and Brian Giontas. Given where we started in the summer of '21, I personally think we'd be in about the same place right now, had we followed the Maroon/Gionta path: a playoff bubble team, crossing our fingers that the youth was about to break out. But we will never know. What we will find out over the next 12 months is whether Adams did indeed blow it, and a Lindy-led core of Thompson/Tuch/Cozens/Quinn/Peterka/Bryum/Dahlin/Power/UP/Levi - developed the way he has chosen to develop it - has the right stuff. Because that is what Adams has built, entirely by design, and that is where he will sink or swim.

Do you think playoffs are the goal? I’m familiar with your position on that personally, and that’s not the discussion I’m going for here. I’m looking for your reading of Adams. Previously, Adams has always been pretty explicit that his goal was to build a team that could be a contender for a long time. Ideally, Tampa/Chicago, but if not, at least Carolina/Boston/Washington. I don’t think that has shifted at all. He’s not switched into “playoffs or bust” mode, I think he’s “critical mass is now here for long-term success” mode. Might be semantics as far as this season goes, but in general do you think his mindset has shifted?

So it’s the time of the year where we complain about how good the players are that we couldn’t wait to run out of town when they were here? Hmm…Krebs can definitely be ERod, different position, but Owen Power can be Reinhart (smart, but way too soft), UPL is Ullmark, Cozens for Mittelstadt, Greenway for Carrier, Skinner for Montour (skill, consistency issues, punchable face), gotta reach a bit for Jokiharju, but you guys are good. You’ll come up with something.

Great story. Pretty sure I’ve heard Kevyn Adams and Seth Appert say exactly the same thing. Pretty sure Murray and Biro and Mersch and Prow and Davies and Clague and Jost and Tokarski and Cecconi are those players. Pretty sure Neuchev and Östlund and others were in the press box in the playoffs getting blocked by some of the guys above. Sabres suck at a lot of stuff, the way they’ve handled the Amerks under Karmanos hasn’t been one of them. They’ve been competitive and they’ve developed players. You don’t need to make things up to complain about.

If failure can teach as much as success, we can hope Kulich and Rosen and Novikov will have learned something. Johnson and Levi might help the Sabres next year. Didn’t see that that from anyone else. One positive from that is that if Adams was considering leaving multiple spot open for rookies, their performance in this series may have convinced him that’s not a good idea.